Missile Control and Disarmament
DISARMAMENT: Expert Panel On Missiles Concludes Second Session
By Jim Wurst, UN Wire, April 9, 2002
UNITED NATIONS — A U.N. panel of experts studying missile proliferation issues on Friday concluded the second of three scheduled sessions. The General Assembly decided in 2000 that the panel should develop "a comprehensive approach to missiles in a balanced and nondiscriminatory manner."
"It is a little bit premature [as to] what kind recommendations we will make," said the panel's chairman, Ambassador Antonio Guerreiro of Brazil. "The problem is that we have norms relating to weapons of mass destruction [such as conventions banning chemical and biological weapons] that follow a certain approach. Missiles are different, because they are not weapons, they are delivery means of weapons."
Of this second session, Guerreiro told UN Wire, "Everyone is engaged in this whole exercise; of course, there are different views. Some feel there should be robust recommendations; others feel we must be more modest."
"We are not only talking about a nonproliferation regime; there are certain members of the panel that put priority on nonproliferation, whereas other members think the problem is not so much nonproliferation but the refinement and accumulation of [missile technology] and missile defense," Guerreiro said. "There are certain norms that a number of countries abide by, and they have been fairly successful," he added.
Those norms, most notably the Missile Technology Control Regime, are viewed by some countries with fledgling missile programs as discriminatory attempts to control access to technology. Some of those countries, such as Iran, have experts on the panel. Since "the technology is nearly the same," Guerreiro said, "what we on the panel have to do is concentrate on the question of missiles and not necessarily satellite launch vehicles."
"It is premature to say where the consensus will lie," he added. The panel is composed of nations with advanced as well as developing missile and space launch capabilities, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, China, Israel, Iran, Egypt, India, Pakistan and South Korea. North Korea was invited to provide an expert but declined. The first meeting took place in August, and the third and final meeting will be in July. The panel's report is scheduled to be presented to the General Assembly by October.
The panel was authorized by the General Assembly in November 2000 on the basis of a resolution introduced by Iran. Ninety-seven nations voted in favor of the resolution, and none opposed it, but 60 abstained in an unusually divisive vote for a resolution requesting the establishment of a study group without making any political judgment. Because those abstaining included all the major Northern military powers, the vote was a reflection of a basic divide on the issue: The Northern states suspect the more developed Southern states of wanting to build long-range weapons systems, and the South suspects the North of denying it access to legitimate scientific knowledge.
The dilemma of dual-use technology — know-how with both civilian and military applications — is at the core of the problem. Guerreiro said that, at one level, dual-use technology "is a fairly easy issue to tackle. We all accept the notion that access to space is a right that every state has, but there should be procedures that guarantee that the technology used is not diverted to military means." However, since this "is about intentions, not technology," he said, "it is a question of perception as to what kind of threat a space program presents. It is a decision for national governments to make. I don't think the panel will come to any conclusion on this."
The panel has decided not to hear from nongovernmental experts. That would be a decision for the General Assembly, Guerreiro said. "That's not the job of the expert group," he said. At least one paper is being circulated by a team of experts from the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, the Western States Legal Foundation in the United States and the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation in Germany.(*)
Called Beyond Missile Defense, the paper proposes creating a ballistic missile framework agreement that would precede negotiations for "a truly comprehensive regime strictly controlling and eliminating ballistic missiles. … States with advanced, long-range missile programs like the United States would have to stop further development of ballistic missiles and begin reducing them. … In exchange, all other states would agree not to develop or acquire ballistic missiles."
The initial framework agreement would include a ban on tests of ballistic missiles and anti-missile programs, a pledge not to deploy weapons in space and the creation of an international verification system. The authors admit this is not likely to happen in the near future, but argue that a discussion of this proposal would provide "a different perspective" on the arms race and would "help break the current deadlock in nuclear arms reduction efforts.”
(*) Added for information: Andrew Lichterman, Zia Mian, M.V. Ramana, Jurgen Scheffran, Beyond Missile Defense, Briefing Paper No.8, International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, Western States Legal Foundation, March 2002.